Colorful season

Dear Editor,

October is here and shades of golden yellow, bright orange, rustic red and deep brown are spreading across Nebraska.

It is time again for Halloween fun, scary things, costumes and masks.

In real life situations, it is counter productive to hide our real fears behind a mask. At times, it is essential to muster up our faith and courage.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the uncertainties of World War II,

"The only thing to fear, is fear itself."

Fortunately, there are heroes and heroines who bravely march forth and come up with solutions.

Proverbs 25:29 in the Old Testament states, "He that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down with no walls."

Dwight D. Eisenhower was stationed at Fort Ord near San Francisco in 1939. His fellow officers called him "Alarmist Ike" because he said the U.S. would soon enter World War II.

Five days after Pearl Harbor on Dec. 12, 1941, he was working on ways to defend U.S. possessions in the Pacific. Three days later, he was made the commanding general of the European Theater of Operations and American Forces.

By June 1942, Eisenhower mostly was dealing with fears that had become a reality. he was in London figuring out how to bring 2,000,000 American soldiers over to England in preparation for the Normandy Invasion. At 6:30 a.m., on June 6, 1944, after a break in impossible weather conditions, Allied Forces began their landing in France.

In 2013, there are numerous stories of heroic individuals. Some of them are emergency volunteers, who rescue people in floods like the recent one in Colorado. Others provide humanitarian aid in third-world countries.

We are grateful to all of them.

Helen Ruth Arnold,

Trenton, Nebraska